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RuneScape Review Part 3: Should You Upgrade?

This is the third part of my RuneScape review. Read the first here and the second here. NOTE: Also, this review is two pages, so make sure not to miss the rest of the review. Just click on “Page 2” below the post.

RuneScape logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now, one of the most pressing things you may want to know about RuneScape, is if you should upgrade to a membership, giving you a huge amount of extra features.

Now, of course this answer will vary from person to person, based on how much you like the game, and if you care for the extra features, but the simple answer, at least if you’re like me and you enjoy the game and want to experience it to it’s full, is yes. It’s 7.95 for a month, and you can buy it in the form of a prepaid card from Walmart or Gamestop, or use PayPal or your credit card. This is half the monthly price of most MMO’s, and you do actually get quite a bit of extra content.

But, since RuneScape is such an open world game, and many different people play it, I’m going to give you a rundown on each specific feature and skill that you gain access to by upgrading.

Skills

First, I’m going to go through the nine extra member skills.

Agility: Now this one makes travelling much less of a hastle. It makes you run longer, which can especially help you if you wear heavy armor, and it also gives you Agility Shortcuts, which are extra little ways to get to places faster. Basically, this skill is useful for getting around. It can also probably save your behind in the wilderness – providing you don’t get one-shotted by someone – because you can outrun players looking to loot your dead body after they take a claymore to your face.

Construction: This skill, which is one of my favorites, gives you the ability to design and construct your own Player House. (or PoHs for short) Now, the downside to this skill, is it is expensive to train, as you need to buy a lot of supplies for building things. You also don’t get much of a return as far as money goes, although you can build your own dungeons and crafting/farming/cooking rooms for training other skills, including a chapel for Prayer. This skills is good for showing off your outstanding level of wealth and awesomeness, though.

Farming: Now this personally is not a skill I use much, but it is a skill that would be very useful for players who like to train Cooking as a skill. This will allow you to gather plants and veggies without needing to buy from other players or shops, saving you money. Or, if you train Herblore, this would also be a useful skill to partner with it. It’s also a skill you can use independently of other skills, and it will make you money if you want to be the one who’s doing the selling to the cooks.

Fletching: This skill is one that would probably only be interesting to you if you were training ranged skills or want to make money by selling bows and arrows that you make. This skill can be paired effectively with Smithing, as to make arrows, you have to use Smithing. Of course a bow will be useless without arrows, but you can buy those if you don’t want to make them. The value of this skill varies wildly depending on what your interested in doing with your character, although a universal aspect of it is making money on the Grand Exchange by selling your bows to other players, especially players who can’t make their own.

Herblore: Now, some players may want this skill, others may not care at all. This is basically alchemy. It allows you to make potions, which are useful in combat for buffing and recharging, or you could just sell it and make some bank on the people who like to explore dungeons. This is definetely an expensive skill if you buy all of the ingredients instead of gathering them yourself. (See Farming) This is why I suggest training Farming as a secondary skill if you want to save money. People have been known to pay up to 400 million gold to get this skill up to level 99. (Source, RuneScape Wiki.)

Hunter: This is another skill that may be useful for money-making. Basically, it allows you to catch animals using snares and such. (Note: this skill has NOTHING to do with Fishing. You can still fish if you’re not a member.) This skill requires quite a bit of equipment if you’re trying to catch a varied amount of creatures.

Slayer: This is a skill that allows you to hunt down and kill special bosses that you normaly wouldn’t be able to fight or even be able to damage. This is a skill that does require combat, so you will also want to train combat also. It is also good for training combat, as you get to fight somewhat exclusive bosses. Also, Slayer bosses drop some goooooood loot, so you can make large amounts of money by selling the rare items you loot and/or use them youself.

Summoning: Summoning is a skill that allows you to summon creatures to help you in combat and potentially other situations. This is a good skill to train along with combat skills, because it basically allows you to summon allys to help you, which can save your Wilderness-travelling behind.

Thieving: This skill can be useful for multiple purposes, as it allows you to pickpocket NPCs and market stalls for coins and loot,andallows you to disarm traps and open locked doors, which is useful for dungeons. A good skill if you want to make some money or if you want to do some rogue-like spelunking and saving you and your friends’ faces from traps. Also, it will of course, make loot even more plentiful in dungeons, because you’ll have access to more locations and locked chests then you normally would.